


Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!"

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Follow any dragon, worship any god [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief, Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Baelor returns from a field of grass turned black by fire and red by blood, and wonders - what right has he to such power, besides a dragon's might?





	Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Riana1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riana1/gifts), [moonlitgleek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlitgleek/gifts), [grumkin_snark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumkin_snark/gifts).



> Title from Macbeth.

**I.**

 

The field was green, before.

Now it shines glossy burned-black and sickly blood-red, a Targaryen banner strewn across the Stormlands until it can be washed away by the inevitable storms.

Somewhere down in the dross lie what is left of two of Baelor’s uncles. His father’s nephews are there too, dead every one of them by Baelor’s hand.

Maerya keens, joyous as they soar above the site of her victory. This is Maekar’s victory too, for all that he will never claim any part of it. Maerya is their glory. Maerya is the mark of Father’s legitimacy, of their prestige, and so she will never be regarded as the terror she truly is.

Baelor loves her as his own soul, but he knows what she is. He understands now, looking at the destruction she has wrought, how the Conquerors so easily subdued all of Westeros save for the clever Dornish. 

A breeze blows skyward, carrying with it the scent of burning and nightmares. Baelor does not vomit, but it is a near thing.

 

 

**II.**

 

Blackfyre is gone forever now, and Baelor is not sorry for it.

Maekar is, and it makes him smile to see his brother’s frustration.

“You deserved it, brother,” he insists. “The sword of kings belonged in your hand.”

“I have the mount of a king, Maekar,” Baelor points out. “I have no need of a sword.”

What violence could he visit upon the world if he had both the dragon and the sword? Already he has killed more than any man since the Dance, and with such ease as to make his head spin. No man can understand it, the power and the danger of having such a creature as Maerya as an ally. Baelor wishes that he did not know it himself.

“There are other swords, my friend,” Manfred Dondarrion says, pressing a flask of the sharp Blackhaven berrywine into his hand. It had comforted Jena enormously, to know that her brother would be in his guard during the battle. “And Father’s sword has served him well enough until now, has it not?”

Maerya, circling in the sky above them, screes as if on cue. Baelor looks up, spies her shining against the creeping edges of indigo night like a final shard of sunset, and feels both love and fear in equal measure. How is he to keep her as a means of controlling the realm when he cannot bear the consequences of that control on his soul?

The city is visible now, glowing quietly against the darkness out across the Narrow Sea, but Baelor keeps his gaze turned westward. He already cannot stomach the thought of facing his father, or of seeing disgust on Mama’s face. 

How is he to face Jena? She is fierce, his Marcher, and understands the sometime necessity of violence, but there is violence and there is catastrophe, and what he and Maerya wrought on the Blackgrass Field was most definitely not simple violence. Will Jena mark his grief and offer him her forgiveness? Or will she turn her shoulder to him, and face away as he feels he deserves?

“Brother,” Aerys calls, dressed in simple robes but still with a sword belted unwelcome at his waist. “Come - we camp tonight, and ride out tomorrow. Come, Baelor - rest your head.”

“Rest your heart,” Rhaegel says, pressing gentle fingers to Baelor’s wrist. “Come, brother. Come away now.”

Maekar is Baelor’s other side, his reflection in so many things, but in this he is as distant as the Wall. Aerys is soft, though, and Rhaegel has always seen things from an angle, so mayhap it makes sense that they can see the pain that Maekar misses.

 

**III.**

 

There is no disgust on Mama’s face. No disappointment in Father. Jena greets him with a ferocious kiss, and garbs him in a soft velvet robe of her own making.

“You great idiot,” she says fondly, her arms still looped around his neck. “Did you doubt me? I would be insulted, if you weren’t so prone to silliness.”

He kisses her again for that.

The city feels bright in a way alien to everything Baelor has ever known of it, full of hope to a degree not experienced since the end of the Dance. Daemon’s fool rebellion has cost so many lives, but perhaps it has also excised some last demons from the realm.

Baelor is so glad that the demon Aegor Rivers grew into is gone. That death, at least, causes him no guilt. 

“My brother’s children are being brought to the city,” Father says, leaning on Baelor’s arm as they amble toward the throne room. He wonders if Father has slept a single night through since they rode out to face Daemon, or if it is only his own frailty of the soul that is making his father’s frailty of the body seem so much more apparent. “Will your Jena receive his wife? I hardly know her, but it is best we make her welcome.”

Jena will do whatever is asked of her, because she is the most dutiful of women as well as the most beautiful. Father knows that, but it is only polite to be sure before asking.

“Your boys are well?” Father asks then. “Valarr I see with you, but Matarys?”

Matarys is Mother’s special favourite of all the grandchildren, although she does her best to disguise it from the others. Father will flay Baelor if he allowed anything to happen to Matarys, and then he’ll let Mama loose.

“He’s with Rhaegel, Father,” Baelor promises. “They’ve grown close since we rode out - I could not choose a gentler mentor for him than my brother, nor a stronger one for Valarr than Maekar.”

Valarr rode out as Maekar’s squire, and Matarys as Rhaegel’s page. The boys had been thrilled, not wholly understanding of what a battlefield would entail, and his brothers had guarded them well, as well as Maerya had kept him.

“Come and sit a while with me, my son,” Father says, squeezing Baelor’s arm and nudging him toward the small council chamber beyond the throne. “Come and sit. Rest your weary feet a time, and then greet everyone else.”

 

**IV.**

 

Rohanne of Tyrosh is proud and imperious, a tall, broad shouldered woman with piercingly green eyes that leave Baelor without even his manners to hide behind.

“You killed Bittersteel?” she asks before he has even opened his mouth to greet her. “You are the one who rides the beast, are you not?”

Maerya is circling the drum tower like a fallen star, and Baelor bows his head.

“I am, my lady,” he agrees. “I understand that he was your goodson, and your goodbrother-”

Rohanne of Tyrosh is beautiful, but granite hard, so Baelor never would have expected her to seize him by the shoulders and kiss his cheeks, first right and then left.

“You have saved my daughter from a life of torture by killing that soulless thing,” she says, tears shining in those sharp eyes. “My son will never challenge for your father’s throne, Baelor Targaryen, son of Mariah. You have my word on that, sworn on the Drunken God.”

Her hair catches the sun and shines the same bright orange as Maerya’s scales, and when Baelor looks over her shoulder, he can see that each of her daughters has hair a different bright colour - but none red. There is hope in that, as much as there is danger in Rohanne’s orange, and the way she has not yet let go of his right arm.

 

**V.**

 

Jena’s ankles are bony and strong under his hands when she throws her feet into his lap in expectation of him rubbing the pains out of her arches, and he feels unworthy of touching her.

“You haven’t kissed me since we were reunited,” she says, her head tipped back over the arm of the low couch under their solar’s window. “Why is that, husband mine?”

He tries to find the words to tell her, he truly does. Jena has always known him heart and soul, right from their first days as man and wife. But how can he explain this? How can he explain to the person he loves most in the world that he does not feel worthy of the love he knows her to bear him in return. 

“Baelor,” she says, now leaning up on her elbows, looking at him with the same sort of fear he felt when she lay so still for so long after birthing Matarys. “You are half my soul. There is nothing you need to hide from me. There is nothing you  _ can  _ hide from me.”

“Then you must already know,” he says, reaching over to take her by the hands, heaving her into his lap so she can fold awkwardly, like a crane, and curl around him. “You must know that I am a monster now, Jena.”

Jena’s hair is the colour of an open flame, warm and bright and soft, and it tumbles down around his face as she kisses his brow and he begins to cry. 

 

**VI.**

 

There are a few tiny dregs of Daemon’s army still hiding in the kingswood, spilling as far south as Summerhall and as far west as Tumbleton. Baelor should be the one to hunt them down, but people would expect him to ride out on Maerya, and he cannot do that. Not again.

He sends Maekar in his place, and is glad of the attention and praise heaped on his worthiest brother. Aerys is glad of the escape to Summerhall, and Rhaegel is away back to the Vale with Alys, but Maekar thrives on action, on activity, and seeing even Father’s always-cautious face lit with pleasure at Maekar’s every return does all of them good.

Those few tiny dregs do not last long, not while Maekar hunts them with Uncle Bloodraven cawing on his shoulder.

 

**VII.**

 

“You need not be so afraid of them, you know.”

Mama has always seen the heart of him, clearer even than Jena does. He is ashamed before her now, when his heart is so weak, so bruised, and leans into the touch of her gentle hand to his hair like a child.

“Maerya’s nature is not yours, my boy,” Mama says quietly, running her many-ringed fingers through his hair as she used when he was small, so small that Maekar was not even born. He used lie with his head against the swell of her belly, then, six years old and so excited to have a baby brother he could know right from the start that he had hardly left her side even once. She had humoured him, guiding his hands so he could feel Maekar kick in her belly, letting him rest his ear against her skin in the hope of hearing the baby’s heart beating, and all the while had told him that it was his duty to protect his brothers just as it would one day be his duty to protect the realm.

“She is my dragon,” he says. “My responsibility. Her sins are mine, Mama. How can I be forgiven for-”

“Men die in battle, Baelor,” Mama says, firm and gentle as only she can be. “It is the chance every man takes when he sets his hand to sword or mace or hammer - would fewer have died had you been riding a warhorse instead of a dragon? Perhaps. But in that world, my son,  _ you _ might not have escaped a bloodier fate, and the whole realm would have suffered for it.” 

He rises then, crosses to the window - and sees Maerya, spinning through the skies. He has loved her so long and so completely that this sickly fear in his gut feels like a betrayal, but he cannot help it.

Mayhap he can overcome it, though, if he leans on his family. They all have offered their support, and he must only be willing to accept it.

“Can you send for Jena and the boys?” he asks Mama, and she smiles. “I have a great deal of apologising to do, I think.”


End file.
